In-vehicle communication in today's automotive sector gives rising requirements on robustness and high data rates. The number of sensors and actuators increases with almost every new invented technology. Comfort orientated and safety critical systems, and even telematics are embedded in a vehicle. The latest requirement is x-by-wire (x=Brake, Steer, . . . ), where the mechanical parts of safety critical systems are replaced by electronic systems. This saves material costs in production and lets companies build lighter and more efficient cars. Communication protocols for these purposes are used to gain the management of complexity, in matters of the data transfer, the fault detection and the fault containment.
In a vehicle the electronic systems are connected to electronic control units (ECU), sensors and actuators. As a result, the number of ECUs, the complexity of the networks and the complexity of the communication increases.
In today's vehicles, usually more than one communication network is used. Different networks are used for different applications. For example, the climate control has different requirements for robustness and data rates versus the air bag system in the side crash region of a vehicle. For safety and mission critical applications in vehicles, FlexRay networks may be used.
The safety relevant difference versus older systems is, that x-by-wire systems have to be protected from software and hardware faults, in order not to endanger the passengers. This leads to high speed real-time communication and the highest possible robustness as requirements for those systems. Accordingly there is a need to increase the robustness of FlexRay networks through runtime error detection and containment.